[Third Person Pov]
The trio sat in silence for a long moment, each of them quietly collecting themselves. Tears still clung to lashes and traced faint paths down their cheeks, but the sharpest edge of the emotion had begun to dull. They let the quiet settle, giving the storm inside them space to pass.
An awkward, heavy silence followed. From where they sat on the bottom step, the Fenton lab stretched out below them—familiar, cluttered, and strangely distant. The Ghost Portal glowed faintly in the far wall, its swirling green light casting long, shifting shadows across the floor. None of them looked at it for long.
Tucker was the one to break the silence. He took his cap off, turned it around, and settled it backwards on his head the way he always did.
"So…" he said, voice still a little rough. "Where exactly do we go from here?"
Sam and Danny didn't answer right away. The question hung in the air between them, heavier than any of them liked. Another few seconds passed before Danny finally spoke, his words quiet and careful.
"I honestly don't know," he admitted. He kept his eyes on the steps in front of him. "Part of me understands why you did what you did. I get it. But another part of me is still hurt. Still angry. So… I don't know where that leaves us."
Sam's voice came next, softer than usual and carrying a note of reluctant hope. "Can't we just… go back to how things were?"
Even as she said it, she knew how hollow the suggestion sounded.
Danny didn't reply immediately. He stared down at the floor for a long moment, brow furrowed.
"Honestly?" he said at last. "It wouldn't be a terrible idea."
Both Sam and Tucker turned to look at him, surprise clear on their faces.
"Really?" they said almost in unison.
Danny gave a small, uncertain shrug. "Yeah. Not forgetting what happened. Not pretending it didn't mess things up. But… learning how to move forward with it. Accepting that it's part of our history now. Part of us."
The words came out steady, but there was still a hesitation underneath them—like he was testing the idea even as he spoke it.
He let out a quiet breath and rested his forehead against his knees. "As angry and hurt as I still am… I don't hate either of you. I couldn't. Not really. Especially when I can see that, at the end of the day, you were just trying to look out for me the only way you knew how. How could I hate you for that?"
A beat of silence.
Then, quieter and more bitter: "Doesn't mean I think it was the right call. It was still stupid."
Sam let out a soft, watery huff of laughter. Mascara and eyeliner had run down her cheeks in thin dark lines, but she managed a stiff little grin.
"In our defense," she said, "the very next day you kind of lost it and started beating up Dash. That… kinda cemented the idea that we were doing the right thing."
Danny opened his mouth to argue, but the words stuck somewhere in his throat. He made a vague, strangled noise instead and looked away, faintly embarrassed.
"I… honestly have no comment," he mumbled.
Tucker started to softly laugh. Sam began snickering. And after a second, Danny couldn't resist joining in as well. The sound was rough around the edges, but it was real. For the first time in what felt like hours, the tension in the air loosened just a fraction.
Tucker rested his chin in his palm, watching the two of them.
"I think the best thing we can do," he said thoughtfully, "isn't to try and pick up exactly where we left off. We should start over. From the beginning. You're still hurt—that's fair. But if we try to act like everything's normal while you're still carrying all that resentment… we're just setting ourselves up to fall apart worse than before."
Danny let out a long, soul-weary sigh. He didn't argue.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "You've got a point. I'm going to need time. Time to sort through everything I'm still feeling. Pretending none of this happened… that wouldn't help any of us."
He lifted his head just enough to glance at the two of them—his best friends, still sitting on either side of him, still waiting.
"But… I'm willing to try," he added, softer. "If you guys are."
Sam looked over towards Danny and appeared hesitant. She first had to steel herself before finally asking, "So then what about us? I mean, you and me. Our relationship. Where does that leave us?"
Danny turned to meet her gaze. For a long second they simply looked at each other—his blue eyes locked with her violet ones. The silence between them felt thicker than the air in the lab.
"I still love you," he said at last, voice low but completely earnest.
Sam and Tucker's eyes both widened. Neither of them had expected him to be so direct.
Color flooded Sam's cheeks almost immediately, spreading hot across her face as Danny continued without looking away.
"If after everything we've been through, I didn't still love you, then what we had wasn't real," Danny said, completely unashamed of the admission. "But I do. A part of me always will"
"But?" Sam asked with a wary smile, already sensing the word coming from a mile away.
Danny looked away. "But after losing you… losing us, or whatever we were supposed to be after everything happened, I had to think about moving forward. And somewhere along the way, I allowed myself to develop feelings for someone else." He swallowed. "I fell in love with Ember."
"Figures," Sam muttered under her breath. She drew her knees up tighter against her chest, arms wrapping around them as if she could make herself smaller.
"She was there for me in ways you couldn't be. She kept checking up on me, tried to make me laugh when I didn't feel like smiling, and she stayed when I was convinced I didn't deserve anyone staying." Danny looked down, his expression heavy with guilt. But even then a small grin broke through, "Hell she even made a song just for me"
"Not being together gave us the chance to actually get close, and somewhere along the way, my fondness for her became something more. Something I can't pretend isn't there."
His fingers tightened against his knees.
"And I'm realizing now that, in my anger, I said things to her that I never should have said. I hurt her because I was hurting, and that's not an excuse. I need to find her. I need to apologize to her properly."
Sam's hair fell like a curtain around her face. When she spoke, her voice was hoarse from the tears she was desperately trying to suppress. "Then… does that mean you and her…"
"No." Danny shook his head. "I'm not getting together with Ember."
"Huh?" both Sam and Tucker asked, staring at him in confusion.
"Didn't you hear what I said?" Danny asked quietly. "I still love you, Sam. I do. But I also love Ember." He rubbed a hand through his hair, frustration and shame twisting together across his face. "I know how awful that sounds. I know it isn't fair, and I know feelings aren't supposed to work this way. But I can't lie about it just because the truth makes me feel like a terrible person."
He took a slow breath. "When I finally realized what I was feeling, I knew I had a choice to make. I could pick one of you and pretend that choosing her meant the feelings I had for the other one would just disappear. But they wouldn't. And I couldn't do that to either of you."
"I was going to talk to Ember about this, but I suppose now that I know you remember everything, you deserve to hear it too. I can't be with you while I'm still in love with Ember, and I can't be with Ember while I'm still in love with you."
Danny's voice became quieter. "I spent a long time trying to find some way around that. Some perfect solution where nobody had to lose anything. I thought maybe there was some answer I just hadn't thought of yet, some way for all three of us to come out of this happy."
He shook his head. "But there isn't one. No matter what I choose, someone gets hurt. And I can't bring myself to look at either of you and say, 'I'm choosing her, so I guess you'll just have to live with it.'"
"If I choose you, I'd be hurting Ember. If I choose Ember, I'd be hurting you. And if I tried to keep both of you, I'd eventually hurt you both even worse."
Danny exhaled softly, brushing his hair back. "So I realized something."
Sam slowly lifted her head.
"Sometimes loving someone doesn't mean you get to have them. Sometimes the greatest thing you can do for someone you love is let them go. Not because you stopped loving them, but because you love them enough to know that your happiness can't come at the expense of theirs."
Danny gave a small, pained smile. "And I love both of you too much to turn either of you into the person who gets sacrificed so that I can have what I want."
Sam's eyes widened, tears finally beginning to spill down her cheeks.
"So if there isn't a way for all of us to be happy…" Danny continued, his voice trembling slightly, "then I'm not going to choose which one of you deserves to hurt."
He looked between them. "I'll let both of you go."
Tucker remained silent, but there was a knowing look in his eyes filled with respect.
Danny gave a small, lopsided grin that didn't quite reach his eyes.
"Maybe that's stupid. Maybe it's not the smartest answer. But I think it's the fairest one I can give you, since even an indecision where I keep you close and not choose is a decision in of itself"
He lowered his gaze, "I'd rather hurt myself by letting you both go than hurt either of you by making you compete for a place in my heart that you already have."
Danny's smile faded, "Because sometimes doing the right thing means choosing the path we know will hurt us the most."
He looked back at Sam, "And sometimes… loving someone means having the strength to let them go."
(A/N: Thoughts?
I wonder what yall thought about my portrayal of Danny's maturity.
Although I hate it since it means we're further away from the harem and a conventional romance/relationship, I wanted to do it right and not rush it 😅)